Time Saving Tuesday

I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten some really tremendous deals on eBay before. The general consensus that I’ve found when talking with people, however, is that they normally make impulse purchases before they take the time to see if they are getting a real bargain. Today we’re going to walk you through a 5 step process that can save you a lot of money in the end.

Ashley and myself ran an eBay business for over a year, and it was quite an interesting experience. From it we found ourselves knowing more about eBay than we ever wanted to, and now our friends always poke and prod us for tips on how they can get the most out of the online marketplace.

1. Search eBay

The first thing that you’ll obviously want to do is search eBay to see what kind of prices they have. Don’t get sucked into the low-priced auctions… no, you’re not going to get a $1,500 laptop for $25. Many people wait until the last minute to bid (a.k.a. sniping), and we’re going to show you the best way to do that as well.

What may prove to be helpful is to checkout the completed listings. On the search page you’ll notice the “Completed listings only” checkbox which will show only those listings that have already ended. If the item you’re looking for is rather common then there should be a fair amount of listings that have already completed, and with those you should be able to get a rough idea of what future listings will realistically sell for.

When sifting through the completed listings be sure to also watch for people who are constantly relisting the same item… especially if it never sells. That’s normally an indication that they really want to get rid of it or they have a bunch that they need to unload. In situations like those you might be able to bargain with them even if all you may get is the shipping fee waived.

Believe it or not eBay actually has their own Deal Finder search engine. When you perform a search on there it will only show items that have zero bids, less than 4 hours left, no reserve price, and free/fixed price shipping. So it is actually different than the regular eBay search engine, and can be beneficial for finding those gems that no one else has come across.

2. Search for Misspellings

Ahhh, we’ve all been criticized at one point or another for not proofreading the things that we write. Well, here’s where you can really benefit from the mistakes that others make. Maybe it’s poor typing skills, a genuine mistake, or maybe they are just in a rush to get a listing done. Whatever it is there are quite a few people out there who like to misspell words in their listings.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Microsoft/Mac Monday

Today we’re taking a look at Apple’s Front Row vs. Windows Media Center. We’re not really sure if Front Row can be compared to Media Center because right now, they serve different purposes. Front Row is more of an interface for controlling the media already on your computer while Media Center will do that in addition to recording television shows. They’re both media hubs though, so we thought it would be interesting to see how they compared.

Before we dive in, we thought we’d first mention the fact that while we may be using MacBook Pro computers for our everyday use, we do have a PC dedicated to running Vista’s Media Center. It has 3 tuners and enables us to record 3 shows simultaneously, and was one of the best investments we’ve made.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Sunday’s Summary

What was going on this week at CyberNet News and Learn Firefox? Here’s your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

• Monday: Vista and Leopard Search Features Compared
• Tuesday: Hot Corners in Windows
• Wednesday: Create Your Own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3
• Thursday: How to Measure Items on Your Screen
• Friday:CyberNotes: The Best Piece of Advice…
• Saturday: CyberNotes: View and Share Panoramic Images at Panoye

• FlagTab - Color code your Firefox tabs, and easily see which tabs are related.

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

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• CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary
• CyberNotes: Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary!
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• CyberNotes: Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary

Weekend Website

I’m one of those that tends to go to photo sites like Flickr if I have a minute to spare just to search for the name of a place I’d like to visit someday so that I can see photos that people have taken from there. It sure doesn’t beat actually going there, but if it’s as close as I’ll get to say, The Eiffel Tower, I’ll take it. Recently I stumbled upon a site that can make seeing these various places via photo even better. It’s called Panoye and it’s a site dedicated to panoramic photos. Today we’ll be taking a look at all that Panoye has to offer.

What is Panoramic Photography?

Before we get into Panoye, let’s first go over what panoramic photography is all about. To help with the explanation, I decided to go to Wikipedia to see how they explained it. They say “while there is no formal definition for the point at which “wide-angle” leaves off and “panoramic” begins, truly panoramic images are thought to capture a field of view comparable to, or greater than, that of the human eye - about 160 degrees by 75 degrees - and should do so while maintaining details across the entire picture.”

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Fun Friday

A couple of weeks ago I got an email forwarded to me and it was a list of rules that Bill Gates gave in a speech at a High School. When he gave the speech, he said they were not things that would be learned in school, and he talked about how “feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real word.” I read through the rules (view here) and they were extremely interesting and gave me the idea to try and find other bits of advice that people in the tech industry have given.

In the process of finding more advice, I learned that these “rules” weren’t actually written by Bill Gates, rather they were written by a man named Charles Sykes in a book called “Dumbing Down America.” This was one of those situations where whoever started the email didn’t exactly get their facts straight, but they were still interesting bits of advice nonetheless. Keeping with the theme, I figured I’d seek out some of the best actually given by Bill Gates, and add to it with advice from Steve Jobs, and Mark Shuttleworth (known for his leadership of the Ubuntux Linux distribution). At least one of these men has played an extremely important role in the computer experience you have, and so we thought it would be worth seeing what kinds of advice they’ve given.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Tutorial Thursday

For whatever reason I frequently find myself needing to resize and measure things on my computer screen. I’m normally measuring some images, trying to figure out how much space I have to work with, or want to make sure things are spaced evenly. It’s taken me a little while to find the tools that are just right for the job, but I think I’ve done it!

Below you’ll find a variety of freeware applications for both Mac OS X and Windows. They all do at least one thing, and do it well: measure! In case you forgot it’s always important to remember the handyman’s nerd’s rule of thumb: measure twice, cut and paste once.

–PMeter (Homepage)–

Windows only

PMeter is a fantastic solution for Windows users that provides a simplistic ruler interface for measuring things. At first glance it may seem as though it’s lacking any power and customizability, but that’s merely because it’s hidden from the exterior. If you right-click anywhere on the ruler you’ll quickly be presented with a menu that has a wealth of options.

If you head on over to the preferences there are some really handy options in there. One thing in particular that I immediately enabled is the zoom window, which can be seen at the right-end of the the ruler above. It’s pretty much a zoomed in view of where your cursor is at, which can make the measuring a little less frustrating when things need to be pixel-perfect.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Web Browser Wednesday

One of my favorite additions to the Firefox 3 browser (currently in Beta) are Smart Bookmarks. There’s a good chance that you’ve played with things in other applications that are similar to Smart Bookmarks. For example, iTunes (and many other media players) have what are referred to as Smart Playlists. These are playlists that automatically assemble themselves based on specific criteria, such as the “most played” and “recently added” media. Smart Bookmarks are very similar since they can show you things like your most visited bookmarks or your recently added bookmarks:

Just a few weeks ago we showed you how to quickly restore the default Smart Bookmarks that come with the browser, but did you know that it’s also possible to make your own? Thanks to the new bookmarks backend that Mozilla has implemented it’s actually pretty easy for you to create your own Smart Bookmarks once you understand how they work. An extension will inevitably come along that makes this a no-brainer, but it will take you no time to catch on to manually creating them.

The first thing we’re going to do is show you the steps needed to create a new Smart Bookmark, and then we’re going to give you an overview of the query syntax you’ll want to use to take things up a notch.

–Creating a Smart Bookmark–

There are a few different ways that you can create a Smart Bookmark, but I’m going to show you the one that I believe is the easiest.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Time Saving Tuesday

One of the features in Mac OS X that often gets some attention is what’s called “hot corners.” It’s a simple concept that gives the user an opportunity to assign actions that are performed whenever their mouse hits a corner of the screen. With the help of some free Windows apps you too will also be able to bask in the goodness known as hot corners!

We’ve got a variety of solutions that we’re going to show you, and all of them make use of hot corners. With them you’ll be able to show your desktop, put your computer into standby, enable the screensaver, activate Vista’s Flip3D, and much more. That’s right… all of that without using any keyboard shortcuts!

–Application (Homepage)–

This is a small free app that will bring hot corners to life for your Windows computer. Once you go through the brief setup process the program will immediately start running in the System Tray. The first thing you’ll want to do is configure Hot Corners so that there are some actions associated with the corners of the screen. Here are the different actions you can assign to each of the four corners:

• Open the control panel
• Lock/Switch User
• Open “My Documents”
• Run any application or open any folder
• Start your Screensaver
• Search Google
• Show your desktop
• Put your computer into standby mode
• Disable/Enable your Screensaver
• Close the current window

Hmmm… the problem is that there are so many good choices, but only four corners to work with. See that extra tab in the configuration screen labeled “Mouse Move?” You can actually assign up to four more mouse gestures using these! To activate the mouse gesture you’ll want to hold down the Windows key+X, and then move your mouse up, left, right, or down respectively.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Microsoft/Mac Monday

As we mentioned last week, our featured CyberNotes articles on Mondays will now focus on both Microsoft and Mac instead of just Microsoft. You could say we’re broadening our horizons a little… Today’s article will be the first in a series of several, focusing on comparing a feature in Vista with one in Mac OS X 10.5. It’s actually amazing how similar yet very different the two operating systems are. We’ll start by comparing the search in the Vista Start Menu with Spotlight, and then we’ll take a look at how searching in Windows Explorer compares to searching in the Finder (Mac).

Vista Start Menu Search vs. Spotlight

Vista’s built-in search feature is most easily accessible right from the Start Menu. One of the first things I noticed once I switched to a Mac is how often I actually used the shortcut to open the Start Menu and then performed a search. Leopard has a similar feature called Spotlight which is used when you want to find something fast and easy without opening the Finder to search. It’s Apple’s search technology which comes built-in to Leopard.

The searching feature in Vista is nice because all you have to do is press the Windows key and then start typing for whatever it is that you’re searching for and the results will start to appear. It seems as though accessing Spotlight is just a bit more difficult because you have to press two keys, the command key and the spacebar, and then you can start typing.

So how do the results of the two searches compare?
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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Sunday’s Summary

What was going on this week at CyberNet News and Learn Firefox? Here’s your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

• Monday: MacBook Pro First Impressions
• Tuesday: Ways to Shutdown Your Computer
• Wednesday: Best IE7 Scripts
• Thursday: HTML Signatures in Apple Mail
• Friday: Friv.com - Endless Games for Your Enjoyment
• Saturday: Online Typing Tests - How fast can you type?

• Page Title Eraser - Removes the title and icon for the selected tab.

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Weekend Website

Did you know that simply 50 words make up 60% of everything that we say? That’s not a whole lot of words considering there are thousands upon thousands of words that are available to use. Even Shakespeare used about 22,000 different words in his published works! According to the PowerTyping site, most of us have a working vocabulary of about 2,000 words which means there are probably about that many words that you could regularly be typing if you use your computer for communicating with others. Being able to accurately type, and the ability to type fast is one of those invaluable skills these days. Today we’re taking a look at four different sites that will test your typing ability and give you the opportunity to improve your skills.

TypeRacer (link)

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Fun Friday

It’s once again Friday, so we decided to have some fun. What better way than to take a break and play a game or two? One of our readers, Radu (thanks Radu!) recently sent us a tip to checkout www.friv.com which has over 200 games available for your enjoyment. These aren’t complex games by any means, and you probably won’t be spending hours playing them, but they are fun. Today we’ll just point out a few of the games that we came across that we enjoyed, but feel free to checkout all 220 of them here! If ever you’re in need of a time-waster, this will be it…

Oh, and before we get started, we just thought it was worth mentioning how the site operates. It’s described as a system of “one in one out, so when a new game is added it simply replaces the least popular one in the existing selection.”

Unfortunately we can’t link to any of the individual games because of how the site is designed, so we’ll include the icon that you need to look for next to each game.

Pool

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Tutorial Thursday

Now that I’m up and running on my Mac I decided to give the Apple Mail program a shot. It’s the built-in email solution that is bundled with Mac OS X, and also lets you do things like leave notes to yourself or manage a todo list. One thing that I quickly noticed was that it doesn’t directly include support for HTML signatures.

It’s kind of always boggled my mind as to why these email applications don’t support HTML signatures out-of-the-box. I don’t think that they need to make it all fancy, but they could at least let users enter a snippet of HTML code to use as a signature. I guess I was spoiled by Outlook’s rich text signature editor, and can’t help but compare Apple Mail’s signature abilities to it. Heck, even Mozilla’s Thunderbird lets you specify an HTML file that can then be used as a signature.

Anyhow, there is a method available for those of you who want to get an HTML signature in Apple Mail. It takes a little bit of work, but once it’s done you should be happy with the results.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Web Browser Wednesday

One of the most popular extensions for Firefox is Greasemonkey simply because it gives developers and users a chance to customize their browsing experience with very little work. The extension has been downloaded over 165,000 times which is pretty incredible, and new scripts that power the extension are always being created.

Given the popularity of the scripting system it comes as no surprise that Internet Explorer has something very similar, but it too requires an add-on before you’ll be able to get it to work. It just so happens that one of the best add-ons for doing so is IE7Pro, which in general is an awesome tool to have installed in Internet Explorer 7.

Once you get IE7Pro installed and running you can check out some of the scripts that it comes with by pulling up the configuration screen. Along the left side you should see a section dedicated to the User Scripts:

It comes with over a dozen different scripts out-of-the-box which is definitely a nice touch. Some are more handy than others, but there are a few that really stand out to me. The Show Password onMouseOver is really nice because it will reveal the contents of a password field when you hover over it with your mouse.

One problem with finding more is that you can’t go and grab a script designed for Greasemonkey because not all of them will work. The creators of IE7Pro realized that, and that’s why they setup their own script site that hosts only the scripts that function properly with their add-on. We thought it would be fun to go through the scripts they have posted, and pull out our favorites. So that’s exactly what we’ve done.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Time Saving Tuesday

This article might seem familiar to some of you because we’ve covered shutdown utilities quite a bit in the past, but rest easy knowing that this is going to be different than anything you may or may not have read. We’re going to cover some of the best shutdown programs and tips out there since, as Ashley has pointed out, this coming Saturday is Shutdown Day.

By shutting down your computer you can save a lot of energy, which is merely money in the bank for you! If you’re one of those who leave your computer on 24-hours a day then think about the money you could save by shutting down your computer overnight. It’s estimated that 25% of people leave their computers on at the end of the day (whether it be at work or home), and so a simple shutdown would be very much welcomed. Heck, we’ve already seen how much money Vista saves because of its various power schemes.

Alright, let’s jump into the different ways to shutdown your Windows computer…

–Shutdown After BitTorrent Downloads Finish–

I’m sure many of you have left your computer running overnight to download something from the BitTorrent network. That’s definitely understandable considering how long it can take somethings, such as Linux DVD’s, to finish downloading especially when you don’t have a fast Internet connection.

One of the most popular BitTorrent clients, uTorrent, has a feature buried within the Options menu that you may not have seen before called Auto Shutdown. Check it out… you can have uTorrent shutdown your computer when the downloads complete:

–Schedule and Shutdown From Anywhere–

I have a server that I like to shutdown at night before I head off to bed, but one of the problems is that it’s not connected to a monitor or anything. So what I end up doing is remotely shutdown the computer from a web interface using Shutter, and thanks to a little port forwarding on my router it’s actually accessible from outside of my network. Don’t worry, you can specify a username and password so that some joe schmo from your local cafe isn’t rebooting your computer every 10 minutes.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Microsoft/Mac Monday

Last week in our MyFive article titled “Computers We’ve Owned,” we left out a “5th Generation” of computers that we’ve owned in the past because we hadn’t yet purchased them. In the article, we mentioned that we’ve been looking at different models and manufacturers to see what would be best. We finally made our decision after lots of research, and the purchases were made. So what kind of computers did we end up with?

After much contemplation and lots of going back-and-forth, we decided on MacBook Pros. Now, before the Apple fanboys start giving us high-fives and the Apple haters start saying “that’s it, I’m done reading CyberNet,” we wanted to point out that even after using the Mac computers for a week, we are still firm believers that both Mac OS X and Windows (whether it be Vista or XP) have strengths and weaknesses. That last sentence alone helps explain why we ended up with MacBook Pros: because with them, we get the best of both worlds! If we said one operating system was better than the other, we’d be ignorant. We can run OS X and have the benefits of using it, but we can also run Vista or XP using Parallels and take advantage of the benefits that they offer.

Today we thought we’d take the time to just let you know about our first impressions: what we like and what we don’t like, and what it’s like going from being a Windows user to an OS X user. After using Windows for so long, there have been lots of things that are taking time to get used to, so we’ll talk about those things as well. Just note that what we’re writing about is our “out-of-box” experience, what the computer was like before installing any applications.

First Impressions

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Sunday’s Summary

What was going on this week at CyberNet News and Learn Firefox? Here’s your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

• Monday: History of Windows System Requirements
• Tuesday: Free Color Pickers
• Wednesday: Top 10 Copy & Paste Firefox Extensions
• Thursday: Take Ownership of Files in Vista
• Friday: Life Before the Internet was like…
• Saturday: Best Sites for Researching Cars and Trucks

• Tab Sidebar - View thumbnail snapshots of your open tabs in the Firefox sidebar.

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Weekend Website

Many people around the World are dependent on cars to get to work so that they’re able to make a living and provide for themselves and their families. Because of this, purchasing a car is one of the most important investments that they’ll make. The process of deciding which cars are of interest and then actually purchasing the car can be a complicated one, but thankfully there are several great websites out there that make it just a bit easier. Today we’re taking a look at four different sites that are great resources if you’re purchasing a car whether it’s a new or used one you’re after. They are:

• AutoTrader
• Cars.com
• Car and Driver
• Motor Trend

AutoTrader (link)

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Fun Friday

It’s hard to imagine what life was like before the Internet, isn’t it? I’ve been using it for more than half of my life, but today’s generation of kids grew up with it. Those are the kids that don’t even know the difference between life before and after the Internet came along, but I’m sure you can remember the differences, like…

1. Balancing your checkbook required waiting for your statement to come from the bank because there was no online banking access
2. Along the same lines, if you wanted money to be transfered from your checking to your savings account or visa-versa, you had to physically walk into the bank to do it instead of quickly logging into your online account…
3. You actually knew all of your friends in “real-life.” There weren’t “virtual” friends or people you call friends but have never met
4. To communicate with friends and family who lived far away, you hand-wrote letters and mailed them through the Post Office
5. Google and Yahoo didn’t exist which meant researching was done with the help of books
6. You received the weather forecast on TV, from the newspaper, or even over the phone…
7. Planning a vacation meant going to see a travel agent to have them arrange the flight, tours and hotel stays
8. You called 411 or used a phone book to look-up telephone numbers
9. Finding out who won a sporting event that you missed meant waiting for the next day’s newspaper to arrive at your doorstep
10. There was no way to track a package that was being delivered to you via UPS or FedEx, you simply had to be patient
11. When you had something you wanted to sell, you ran an ad in the newspaper and hoped someone in the area would be interested because there was no eBay or Craigslist
12. Finding out the show-times for movies at the local theater meant calling their pre-recorded message and listening through the whole thing to hear what movies were playing and at what time, or just showing up at the theater and seeing what was playing
13. To get human interaction, you went to physically visit your friends instead of chatting in forums or leaving messages on message boards
14. Keeping an account of what was going on in your life meant writing it out on paper with a pen or pencil instead of keeping an online blog or journal
15. Watching a home-video or sharing it with friends meant you needed a VCR, there was no YouTube or other video sharing services
16. Buying music required going to a physical store and purchasing a cassette tape or a CD and playing it in your Walkman or Boom-box, there was no iTunes
17. Talking to multiple friends at the same time required that you be in the same room, this was what life was like before instant messaging…
18. No one had heard of the terms “Identity Theft” or “Phishing”
19. The only way to pay bills was to mail them or maybe pay using a check over the phone because online bill-pay wasn’t an option…
20. Finding a book at the library meant searching through the little cards in the card catalogue and not using an online system

After looking through this list, it really makes me thankful at how far we’ve come! I can’t imagine needing to wait for a newspaper to arrive to get the news or needing to walk into a Travel Agent’s office to plan a trip. Even worse is the thought of physically mailing all of my communication between friends and family, we really are spoiled with email, aren’t we?

This beginning part of this Chris Pirillo video is kinda humorous and fits in well to today’s topic, so take a look:

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Tutorial Thursday

Microsoft has made some good efforts to make Vista a lot more secure than previous versions of Windows by locking down files and folders on your system. They must have figured if it’s verging on painful for you to move or delete the files then it would probably be difficult for viruses to do the same. What if you wanted to modify or delete a system file for one reason or another?

This can be done by taking ownership of the file or folder. Taking ownership will not only let you manage the file or folder, but it can also be used as a way to avoid the User Account Control (UAC) prompt. For example, if you take ownership of the “Mozilla Firefox” folder in the “Program Files” you’ll never see the UAC prompt when dealing with that particular folder.

Important: It should be noted that whatever files you take ownership of could become more vulnerable to attacks.

–Manual Steps–

There are two ways to do this manually, and neither are much fun. The next section of this article offers a one-click solution, but I’m sure many of you are curious as to what taking ownership of a file or folder actually entails.

• GUI (Graphical User Interface) - As expected being able to take ownership of a file can be done through the file properties window. We’ve already put together instructions on how to do this before, but it can be a rather daunting 5-step process if you have to do it repeatedly.
• Command line - The How-To Geek has a great set of instructions as to how you can use the command line to take ownership of a file. It’s pretty much a two-line job, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world to remember.

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Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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